


Thief in the Shadows

by John_Halpert



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 11:37:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6237076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Halpert/pseuds/John_Halpert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just before the dwarves arrive at Lake Town, a man struggling to make ends meet hatches a plan to change his fortunes. But will circumstances fall out of place or will he be able to reach his dreams. </p><p>Disclaimer: I do not own anything or any of the characters within this story</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thief in the Shadows

Lake Town, a cold, miserable place full of damp mould and depressed people. During the summers the sun barely comes out for one hour a day, the rest of the time it’s just thick rolling grey clouds with relentless rain. Not just an occasional light spitting of rain, pools of water fall from the sky and splat on the wooden paths like falling anvils. And the winters are even worse; the water freezes over causing the paths to be death traps with the risk of falling into the ice cold water below. Instead of great pools of water, thick snow lands across the whole town. Reading this, one might think it a perfect picture but I can promise you it’s not. The unyielding snow is a constant problem, making it nearly impossible to fish; the risk of freezing for many of the poor is an ever increasing problem. Particularly since everyone was become weaker and poorer as the years went on. It was getting harder to harder to warm yourself; fire wood was scarce to the point where many began to consider burning their own possessions just to survive another night. And by some means this is what I am fortunate enough to call my home. 

Like everyone else round here I am a fisherman. You might have heard of the saying give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for a life time. Well imagine that but on a bigger scale. To the point where nobody could sell any fish or teach anyone to fish since everyone already knew how to do it. To the point where the fish were becoming so scarce that there was very little to trade with the surrounding towns. A few people owned the majority of the towns wealth. Most notably being the master of Lake Town. He was the best person to work for, if you somehow managed to swindle your way to becoming a guard at his palace you would at least have some vague sense of security. The pay was good compared to a being a fisherman, you could guarantee on being given a hot meal whilst you were on guard and since you worked for the richest person in Lake Town, you had almost free access to the only reliable source of warmth, being the Masters palace that spent great amounts of wood reserves every day to keep it warm. I knew a few people who were lucky enough to be guards. I tried applying once, but as you can imagine if a position came up everyone in the whole of Esgaroth applied. Naturally being a poor fisherman from a family that could not even remotely be described at any point as being wealthy, my application was straight at the bottom of the pile. That left me a penniless fisherman who will likely die a penniless fisherman with no one beside me. Everyone in my family had perished, either at the hands of the cold winters or at the hands of desperation. I knew I had to get out of this retched place but then what? Leave here to die in some wood, no if I was to leave here I needed to change my situation. I needed to have some kind of wealth that would allow me to set myself up somewhere else. I had imagined owning an apartment or house in the White City of Gondor. It wasn’t damp there, no need to worry about damp clothes or endless rain showers. Pure blue skies and blaring sun, every single day. But that was stuff of dreams. Short from stealing from the most guarding room throughout the whole of Lake Town where the Masters gold reserves were stored or somehow breaking through tones and tones of solid rock to find some mystical treasure that was apparently guarded by some dragon there was nothing that I could do. My dreams were doomed to stay dreams.

Since I was a child I was taught about how Lake Town used to be a centre of trade between Men, Elves and Dwarves and that one day Dwarves would reclaim the lonely mountain and restore Lake Town to its original wealth. A load of nonsense in my opinion. A completely made up story to give people hope that their lives will one day be better than what it is now. That was my main gripe with the people of Lake Town. Sure some of them were nice enough but they all were desperate to think that one day everything will suddenly become better. One day they will all be rich beyond imagine. But that notion is only for fools. If you want to be rich you need to take it, not wait for someone to give it to you. Like most places across Middle Earth we did have a fair share of crazy citizens. These people relentlessly preached about some threat that would destroy us all or ruin everything that we have (not that we had much anyway). The worst one of these was a man called Bard. He constantly spoke about threats from Elves of other Men coming to destroy us. Annoyingly he was one of the best traders we had at Lake Town, he would regularly travel to the surrounding areas to trade for food with the Elves. That gave us some peace and quiet at least, and then when he came back we had to stand his antics because he brought back with him some of the most profitable resources. That being said he was by no means the worst person in Lake Town. That award is reserved for Alfred Lickspittle. A complete leach that spends his life either sucking up to the Master or pushing down the poor. The worst thing about Alfred though was the fact that the Master loved it. Alfred is arguably the second most powerful man in the whole of Lake Town. Nobody can oppose him because he holds the authority of the Master. He was well known for taking family savings, stopping people from eating, all in the name of doing the Master’s bidding. It was best that if Alfred was on the prowl, you stay away from having anything to do with him. Bard was the only one brave (or stupid) enough to stand up to his oppression. Not that he has benefitted from doing it in anyway. Alfred probably would have had him thrown in prison if it wasn’t for the food he manages to bring in. 

I managed to stay away from a lot of what happened. My house was a small little place on the edge of Esgaroth. It was handy being on the edge, sure it took longer to get to market but it had easy access to the lakes where I fished. I owned a small yard outside of my house where I kept my boats. I owned two boats; one was built specifically to deal with the harsh icy conditions of the winters. The other was less so hard built but a lot larger. I could easily hold twice as many fish than my winter boat. I had a small kitchen/ diner next to my bedroom, or to put it more appropriately, I had layers of grey rags that I had laid on the floor which made a bed of some sorts. Like every house in Lake Town it was covered in mould, thick green mould that a good scrub would by no means make any kind of difference at all to the situation. It wasn’t much for a home and I longed for something more but part of my brain felt grateful for what I had. Most people who were in my situation had a one roomed house where they had to eat, sleep and wash. By some miraculous circumstances I had managed to keep hold of my ancestor’s house. As you can probably gather this was a rather poor way of living. Day to day life was a struggle and besides from a group of dwarves arriving with a magical key that would miraculously open up the lonely mountain to all its riches, life was by no means going to get better. And that is where my story begins.


End file.
